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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Chloe World: The Creator gets to make the rules

My daughter, Chloe, has a quick and powerful imagination. One of her nicknames is "Chloe the Creative." When she finds the reality of this world too limiting for her thoughts, she imagines a place she refers to as "Chloe World." In my own imagination, I see children's books in her future where the stories of Chloe World come to life, much like C.S. Lewis' Narnia or J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.My daughter has a notebook where she draws plants, animals, and scenes from Chloe World. Limited only by her imagination and the number of colors in her box of markers, she creates new plants and creatures. Each creation has a name and a description.

Earlier today she drew a plant from Chloe World. Arrisia (pronounced air-eh-see-uh) is a plant with three stems and rainbow petals surrounding a purple center. The outer stems collect and transport rain water while the middle stem has the root system. Raindrops in Chloe World fall from the sky as miniature rainbows.When she shows me one of her drawings or tells me about part of her world, I have never tried to change the name or the design of the creation. After all, she is the creator so she gets to decide the name of each item and how it works. And certainly none of the creations themselves have tried to change who or what they are.This evening I finished a rewrite on a section of my next book, Everything We Need: God's Path to Know Him Better. I worked on a section on the love of God. God didn't only create things like ladybugs and oceans; He also created things like love. Since He created it, He gets to define it and describe it. He did so in 1 John 4:9-10, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." We may think love is about the way a person makes us feel. However, God defines love as sacrifice for another. He created it, He defined it, and we don't get to change it.Once I started thinking about this - that the creator gets to define the creation - I wondered what else God created that we have changed the definition from what He intended.The first one I thought of was marriage. God created marriage in Genesis 2:21-25. As its creator, He gets to define and describe what it is. He does so in this passage - it is a union between one man and one woman. Two men or two women may engage in a sexual relationship, they may even be committed to one another for life, but it's not marriage. God created marriage and He defined it. We don't get to change it.Now my wheels were spinning. Salvation, our source of eternal life, is another area where people try to change the definition from what the Creator intended. People have decided all kinds of paths will lead them to eternity in heaven. But again, God created heaven and eternity and He gets to define it. He did so in John 17:3, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." We only find eternal life through knowing Him and His Son, Jesus. We don't get to change that.How about you? Can you think of other areas where people have tried to change the definition from what the Creator intended? I'd love to hear them in the comments...